Looker is the future of data exploration, visualization and reporting.
August 18, 2015

Looker is the future of data exploration, visualization and reporting.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Looker

Looker is being used across the entire organization to surface relevant data that helps teams make data-driven decisions on a daily basis. Looker serves as a "single source of truth" when it comes to data, and helps strategic discussions stay focused and data rich. The platform is used for tracking of new/ongoing initiatives, as well as day-to-day operational performance.

Pros

  • Joining multiple tables. They call this "symmetric aggregates." Basically, you can join tons of tables together, and only have to specify the type of join (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many) for each join, and Looker takes care of the rest -- no more fan out problems!
  • Data modeling -- LookML is pretty easy to learn, and it's super powerful. Every type of calculated dimension or measure, especially dates, are handled with ease.

Cons

  • Visualization customization -- Looker is constantly releasing new versions, and the area where I'd like to see improvements is in more advanced visualizaion. Reference lines, trend lines, etc.
  • GoodData,Domo,Birst,Sisense,Tableau Server
Looker's modeling capabilities (especially dealing with symmetric aggregates), as well as the platform's accessibility to both basic users and technical users, makes it a slam dunk. There is no "black box," where you end up not being able to trust the data -- you can follow the information through from source to graph, and fully understand all transformations along the way.
We've been very happy with Looker so far, and all teams in the organization are starting to see its value, and use it on a frequent basis. It has quickly become our accessible "source of truth" for all data/metrics.
Looker has been adopted company-wide, and Looker dashboards are displayed on screens throughout the office. It is the single source of truth, and as the company grows, so will the number of Looker users.
Looker is able to connect to a wide variety of data sources, and connect disparate sets of data together with ease. You are able to customize the update frequency and parameters for updates.
Views and dashboards are easily shared, and the ability of basic users to easily create new views allows for a lot of new data discovery.
Looker is great for data modeling and visualization. It has a great user interface that allows all types of users to "self-serve," and explore the data, as well as share the views they create. Looker is not currently great for any type of modeling / advanced analysis.

Looker Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
8.0
Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
8.3
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
8
Report sharing and collaboration
8
6.3
Publish to Web
6
Publish to PDF
6
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
6.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
5
9.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
9
Role-Based Security Model
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
9
Mobile Capabilities ()
Not Rated
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding ()
Not Rated

Comments

More Reviews of Looker

  1. Home
  2. Business Intelligence (BI) Tools
  3. Looker Reviews
  4. User Review of Looker